“Are your buddies on time like you?”
“Roberto is already on the corner by the orphanage, and I saw Melquíades on his way to Santa Isabel.”
It was quickly growing light, and Mayta was sorry he hadn’t checked over the sub-machine gun once more. He had oiled it the night before in the barbershop, and before going to sleep, he’d clicked the safety on and off, to check if the gun was loaded. What need was there for another check? Now there was some movement in the plaza. Women with cloaked heads were walking by, heading for the cathedral, and from time to time a van or a truck passed, loaded with bundles or barrels. It was five minutes to six. He stood up and grabbed his suitcase.
“Run to Santa Isabel, and if the truck’s there, tell my group to park in front of the jail. At six-thirty I’ll let them in. Got it?”
“I don’t have anything to hide, so I’ll tell you the way it was. The guy in charge of everything wasn’t Vallejos or the outsider but Ubilluz.” Don Ezequiel scratches the bumpy wattles on his throat with his black fingernails, and snorts. “He was responsible for what happened and what didn’t happen that morning. You’re wasting your time shooting the shit with anyone else. He’s the guy you want. That fuckup is the only one who knows just exactly what the fuck happened.”
A radio turned up full blast and broadcasting in English drowns out his voice. It’s a station set up for the American Marines and pilots, who are using the Colegio San José as a headquarters.
“There goes the radio station of the motherfucking gringos!” barks don Ezequiel, covering his ears.
I tell him how surprised I am not to have seen Marines on the streets, that all the patrols around are Peruvian soldiers and national guardsmen.
“The gringos must be sleeping it off or resting after screwing so much,” he bellows, enraged. “They’ve corrupted Jauja totally, even the nuns are prostitutes now. How could it be otherwise when they’ve got dollars and we’re dying of hunger? They say they even bring their water in by plane. It isn’t true that their money helps local commerce. Not a single one has ever come in here to buy anything. They only spend money on cocaine, you bet; they pay anything for cocaine. It’s a lie that they’ve come here to fight the communists. They’ve come to snort cocaine and screw Jauja girls. They even brought blacks with them, how the hell do you like that?”
Even though I’m paying attention to don Ezequiel’s tantrum, I don’t forget about what Mayta was doing that early morning twenty-five years ago, in that Jauja free of revolutionaries and Marines, as he walked down the morning street Alfonso Ugarte, carrying his weapon in his suitcase. Was he worried that the truck was late? He must have been. Even though they knew that someone was bound to be late, this first problem — even before the plan went into effect — must have troubled him. As to the plan itself, I think I’ve figured it out fairly well, despite all the lies and fantasies surrounding it, up until the moment when, about eleven in the morning, the revolutionaries were to leave Jauja and head for the bridge at Molinos.
From that point on, I get lost, because of the contradictions in the various accounts I’ve heard. I’m increasingly sure that only a small nucleus — perhaps only Vallejos and Ubilluz, maybe just those two and Mayta, perhaps only the lieutenant — knew everything they’d planned. The decision to keep the others ignorant of the entire plan hampered them terribly. What could Mayta have been thinking about on the last block of Alfonso Ugarte, when he saw on his left the adobe walls and the tile-covered eaves of the jail? That, to the right, behind the curtains in Ubilluz’s house, Shorty and the comrades from La Oroya, Casapalca, and Morocha, ensconced there since the night before or at least for some hours now, were perhaps watching him pass. Should he warn them that the truck hadn’t come? No, he should just follow orders. Besides, just from seeing him there alone, they would understand that the truck was held up. If it arrived in the next half hour, the Ricrán men would get into the fray. And if it didn’t, they would meet with them in Quero, where the latecomers were supposed to go.
He reached the stone façade of the jail, and as the lieutenant had said, there was no guard. The rusty door opened and Vallejos appeared. Signaling him to be quiet, he took Mayta by the arm and brought him in, after checking to see if anyone was following him. With a gesture, he told him to go into the warden’s office. Then he disappeared. Mayta observed the entranceway with its columns, the door of the room in front, which had the word Guardroom on it, and the little patio with cherry trees, which had long, thin leaves and clusters of fruit. In the room where he stood, there was the national emblem, a blackboard, a desk, a chair, and a small window. Through the dirty glass, he could just make out the street. He stood there with the suitcase in his hands, not knowing what to do.
Then Vallejos came back. “Just wanted to see if anyone noticed you come in,” he said in a low voice. “Didn’t the truck come?”
“Seems not. I sent Feliciano to wait for it and to tell my group to be here at six-thirty. Will we need the Ricrán people?”
“No problem,” said Vallejos. “Hide in here and wait. Don’t make a sound.”
Mayta was reassured by the calm and sureness of the lieutenant. He was wearing fatigues, boots, and a black turtleneck sweater instead of his commando shirt. He went into the warden’s inner office, which seemed to him a kind of large closet with white walls. That cabinet must have been a weapons locker, they must put rifles in those niches over there. When he closed the door, he found himself in semi-darkness. He had to struggle to open the suitcase, because the lock jammed. He took out the sub-machine gun and put the ammunition clips in his pockets. As suddenly as it came alive, the radio fell silent. What had happened to the truck from Ricrán?
“It had arrived very early at Santa Isabel, where it was supposed to go.” Don Ezequiel bursts into laughter, and it’s as if poison were pouring out of his eyes, mouth, and ears. “And when the thing at the jail began, it had already left. But not heading for Quero, where it was supposed to go, but for Lima. And not carrying communists or stolen weapons. No, sir. What was it carrying? Beans! As fucking crazy as it sounds. The revolution’s truck, just when the revolution was starting, went off to Lima with a shipment of beans. Why don’t you ask me whose beans they were?”
“I’m not going to ask you, because you’re going to tell me they were Shorty Ubilluz’s beans,” I say.
Don Ezequiel gives another one of his monstrous cackles. “Why don’t you ask me who was driving it?” He raises his dirty hands, and as if punching someone, he points to the plaza. “I saw him go by, I recognized that traitor. I saw him hanging on to the steering wheel, wearing a faggoty blue cap. I saw the sacks of beans. What the fuck is going on here? What do you think was going to happen — that damned son of a bitch was screwing Vallejos, the outsider, and me.”
“Tell me just one thing more, and then I’ll leave you in peace, don Ezequiel. Why didn’t you go, too, that morning? Why did you stay so peacefully in your barbershop? Why didn’t you at least hide?”
His fruit-like face contemplates me horribly for several seconds, in slow fury. I watch him pick his nose and tear at the skin on his neck. When he answers, he still feels the need to lie. “Why the hell should I hide when I had nothing to do with anything? What the hell for?”
“Don Ezequiel, don Ezequiel,” I chide him. “Twenty-five years have gone by, Peru’s going down the drain, people are thinking only of saving themselves from a war that isn’t even being fought by Peruvians, you and I might be dead in the next raid or skirmish. Who cares anymore what happened that day? Tell me the truth, help me to end my story before this homicidal chaos our country has become eats both of us up. You were supposed to cut the telephone lines and hire some taxis, using a phony barbeque over in Molinos as a pretext. Don’t you remember what time you were supposed to be at the telephone company? Five minutes after they opened up. The taxis were going to wait at the corner of Alfonso Ugarte and La Mar, where Mayta’s group was going to commandeer them. But you didn’t hire the cabs, you didn’t go to the telephone company, and when the joeboy came to ask you what was going on, you told him: ‘Nothing’s going on, it’s all gone to hell, run to school and forget you even know who I am.’ That joeboy is Telésforo Salinas, director of physical education for this province, don Ezequiel.”